


Numbing System

by Quitebrilliantindeed



Category: Xenosaga
Genre: Anxiety, Coping, Depression, Family, Family Loss, Gen, References to Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quitebrilliantindeed/pseuds/Quitebrilliantindeed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shion learned how to dance around the difficult subjects. Post-Game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Numbing System

**Author's Note:**

> Probably the most personal fanfic I've ever written.  
> I hope you all enjoy it-- I wasn't sure if I should post it or not, but I figured that since writing it was so cathartic, posting it might be too. Please be careful though-- I actually /have/ triggers for someof the things talked about here, so I'm certain there are more of you. (Illness, hospitals, lot's og guilt and anxiety relating to these things....) Please be careful!
> 
> C:

Jr. told her to talk about it.

Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Because as long as she kept it underwater, she wouldn’t have to see it, and therefore, it couldn’t hurt her.

Why deal with it now? She had enough to reorganize and re-evaluate in her life. The last thing she needed was another old demon to creep up her back and pinch her in the neck.

When they asked if she was okay about it, she replied with the same thing every time: “It’s over. I dealt with it.” Her mind had gone numb throughout the whole ordeal anyway—if it didn’t bother her then, it shouldn't bother her now.

“I don’t believe that for one second.”

Yeah? Well, neither did she.

Shion knew it was a coping skill—simple as that. She had no control over how her mind chose to handle this sort of thing—so if it shut off and ignored the problem; that was just the way the way it would have to be. Honestly, it was rather nice. She could focus on other things, she didn’t have to feel crushed under the weight of memories she thought she had burned. It felt _free._

Free, that is, until someone brought the subject up.  Then it was a waltz—no—a flurry, a scramble to get away from the subject, and return to the status quo she had begun to covet so twistedly.

In moments like that, she realized that it was indeed, still a problem. Perhaps a problem deeper than any other she still faced in this day and age.

It wasn’t easy to describe, but she could pinpoint how it began:

She couldn’t remember her mother’s voice.

What did it sound like? What did she do? She had images, smeared and blurry, of a time before the sickness came. She remembered being driven somewhere, grocery bags in hand. She remembered being chased around the yard. She remembered throwing a ball, back and forth. She remembered a sandwich at a restaurant, and declaration of how she was supposed to eat it.

She remembered little things.

(She couldn’t finish the sandwich. It was too big, and she was too small.)

But she couldn’t remember a voice.

Nor a face.

Not even her handwriting.

(But she did know she _looked_ a lot like her mother. That scared her.)

Knowing the truth about her father was difficult. It was better than she had expected—there was no doubt about that—but a seed of hatred still lingered.

Was it because of the lies? Because of what he did, despite all his reasoning? No, no, no, none of that!

She wanted to look him in the eye, rise to her feet, and scream:

“ _Did you even try_?!”      

Her _mother_ was the one who raised her. Her _mother_ was the one who spoke kindly to her in her childish sadness. Her _mother_ played with her, despite her responsibilities. Her mother was _everything,_ and her mother _was always there._

“ _You don’t even care--!”_

How was she supposed to find respect for a man who sold his wife and daughter into experimentation? He claimed it was _for_ them, _all_ for them, but with all his lies _, how was she even supposed to believe that?_

(But deep inside, she knew he cared. She knew he spoke only the truth. She was simply too angry on all the outer layers to acknowledge it quite yet.)

Sometimes though, she still had flashbacks.

Shion knew that she had seen a lot. She cried and whined and cursed her luck and the cruelty of the world—she did it all without fear of being seen as some kind of pity-party, because the pain alone hurt too much—she didn’t need that guilt on top of it.

But her flashbacks weren’t of the Conflict. They weren’t of Michtam, of Zarathustra, and Kevin—they were faint images of hospital rooms and flowerbeds. They were still images of her withered mother in a bed, and the smells of sterile floors, fluids, cold food, and white walls. They were of walkers and wheelchairs and crutches, and gross, dying bodies scattered around her in a terrible nightmare of illness and death—

They were of fear. Of herself, fainting in the Mobius Hotel, fainting in the CAT Facility, fainting, fainting, fainting, like her mother had done so many times before the big eyes if a tiny, little, young version of herself.

She knew now, that she was safe. Things had changed—her case was different. She would never fall prey to the same illness that claimed her mother—but the fear remained. The fear, not of that illness, but of general sickness, of general weakness—the gasp every time she cut her hand or caught a cold—the paranoia lurking around in the shadows of her head.

All the things she dared not speak of to any soul. Not Jr, not Allen, not even the ghosts of people she once knew.

It was silliness. She knew that. It was silliness to be afraid, to keep lingering on her father (blaming her father), to keep avoiding her mother (never speaking of her feelings), to keep up this silly charade of toughness and fearlessness in the face of all the things she had experienced, both old and new.

But she was human, was she not?

Maybe she was doomed to be caught in that loop forever and ever, until she finally took the advice her friends shoved at her, and _talked about it._

But was always painful to admit that sort of thing.

Later that day, in the midst of conversation, Jr. asked her again:

“What was your mother like anyway?”

Shion froze—like she always did. And then:

“I guess we were really close,” She replied slowly, barely aware of the sounds coming from her mouth. Her lips were moving, words were forming, but she didn’t know what they were. “I mean, I didn’t know her for long, but…” She frowned, because she remembered—that there was no voice or face or handwriting left in her mind—but—“It was good. What we had… it was good.”

She then changed the subject, bringing it as far away from that topic as she possibly could.

She was still running—she knew that.

But she had said something—and something is a little more than nothing, and that was another step in the direction she was _still_ desperately trying to head.

It still haunted her, even that night. But as she closed her eyes, tears running into her mouth and onto her pillow and sheets, she remembered a ball, and a restaurant, and a car full of groceries—

And she thought that she wouldn’t trade those for anything, not even a face—

Or a voice.

Or a scrap of handwriting.


End file.
